1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to displaying targeted content to content observers and, in particular, to displaying targeted content to television viewers. Most particularly, the invention relates to displaying targeted content (e.g., targeted product placements) within a television program and to displaying such targeted content based on the identity and/or a characteristic of a television viewer who is determined to be viewing a television at the time that the targeted content is to be displayed on the television.
2. Related Art
The direct marketing industry has demonstrated the value in being able to target content (in the case of direct marketing, typically an advertisement) to a particular type of consumer. A targeted advertisement increases the likelihood of stimulating a consumer's interest in a product or service. For example, the message that would be used effectively to sell a car to a family with children that places a high value on safety is clearly very different from the message that would be used effectively to sell the same car to a recent college graduate who is looking forward to the chance to spread their wings. Further, particular advertisers may desire to communicate only with particular consumers. For example, a manufacturer of feminine hygiene products may highly value the ability to show their commercial to a female, but will place little or no value on the ability to show the commercial to an elderly male viewer. Similarly, a skateboard manufacturer would love to show their advertisement to teens, but has little interest in showing the advertisement to viewers of other ages.
Like other content providers, content providers that deliver content for display on television (e.g., broadcast stations, cable operators) have an interest in delivering and displaying targeted content to television viewers. Television content providers desire to exploit the value of their product. Their primary vehicle for doing so is selling advertising time. Delivering custom advertisements targeted to particular viewers can increase the value of that advertising time. In many ways delivering custom television broadcast content is similar to the airline industry's efforts at yield management. Content providers (e.g., advertisers) have a period of time (e.g., 30 second commercial break in a television program) to present their message and if they don't extract the maximum value from this time then it is lost forever. Currently, television advertisers seek to target their advertising by picking appropriate television programs during which to show their advertisements. However, it is desirable to enable a more precise form of targeted marketing for television advertising and, more generally, to enable custom content delivery for use in provision of television content (e.g., television broadcasts, on-demand television content delivery).
A television content delivery system provided by ACTV, Inc. of New York, N.Y. broadcasts several commercials together for possible display by receiving televisions, with only one of the commercials being displayed on each television. (See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,091.) Since all of the possible commercials are broadcast in real-time for immediate use in generating a display, only a small number of commercials can be sent. Therefore, the number of possible different commercial messages is small.
Additionally, the particular commercial chosen for display on a television at a particular time is not dependent on a determination of the characteristics of the viewer(s) that are watching the television at that particular time. Therefore, the particular commercial displayed on a television at a particular time may not be appropriate for the viewer(s) watching the television at that time.
Access to advertising space can be distributed by auction. (See, for example, the advertisement auction services provided by adauction.com, as described, for example, at www.adauction.com.) Distributing access to advertising space by auction can enable those advertisers who most highly value particular access to advertising space to obtain that access. However, advertisement auctions have not enabled advertising space to be auctioned in real time as the advertising space becomes available for display of an advertisement. Nor have advertisement auctions enabled an advertising space to be auctioned off piecemeal to different advertisers who will present different advertisements within that space, i.e., advertisements auctions have not been used to enable targeted advertising. For example, advertisement auctions have not been used to enable different television advertisements to be presented to different television viewers.
The use of a personal video recorder (PVR), a type of digital consumer VCR having capabilities for flexibly viewing television broadcasts that is available from such companies as TiVo, Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. or ReplayTV, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., can enable a television viewer to fast-forward through commercial breaks in a television program. As the use of PVRs becomes more prevalent, and the likelihood that a substantial number of viewers are bypassing viewing of advertisements during commercial breaks increases, many commercial messages may migrate to product placements inside a television program. Instead of a distinct time during a television program at which there is a break for a commercial message, products will be seamlessly incorporated into the television program. For example, a cereal maker may advertise their product by having Jerry Seinfeld pick up a box of their cereal during an episode of “Seinfeld.”
It can be desirable to enable such advertising to be targeted to particular viewers. Princeton Video Image, Inc. of Lawrenceville, N.J. has developed techniques to enable virtual billboards or signs in a television program to be changed to include content from multiple different content providers. Thus, for example, the content of a virtual sign on a wall behind home plate in a baseball stadium can be revised as desired to present content from a particular advertiser (e.g., company logos of different advertisers can be displayed at different times on the virtual sign). However, the integration of such virtual billboards or signs with surrounding content so that each version of the virtual billboard or sign is seamlessly integrated with the surrounding content is typically much easier to do than is the seamless integration of other types of changeable content (e.g., an object handled, or otherwise interacted with, by a character in a television program) with the surrounding content, since the virtual billboard or sign is typically not as integrated into that surrounding content. For example, the virtual sign on a wall behind home plate in a baseball stadium is typically surrounded only by a monochromatic wall; more complex content is (relatively) distant from the virtual sign.